Crafting For Those Dedicated to Experimentation

Progress, or not

So spinning every day was a great idea. Unfortunately it did not take into account my being sick enough that dragging myself to work was about all I could do. Therefore my spinning has fallen off track a bit, not irreparable though. While I will not actually get 365 days of spinning this year, my goal was to take each month as it comes and deal with it that way. January is sort of shot, I missed about 3 days, but I will finish strong and start up with February.

Speaking of starting up, Mom is almost fully recovered from her previous illness. She has decided to see how many crafts she can finish with the supplies we already have laid in. Essentially she has declared this her year of Stash Busting Crafts! So far this month she has crocheted up 2 cowls from yarn she had on hand, I will put up pictures of those in my next post.

I have decided to accompany her on this quest, though for my major tapestry project I will need to purchase more wool in periwinkle, though I will admit to a desire to see how much of that project I can get done with the supplies I had already laid in. (Warp threads, white weft, and some singles spun in periwinkle, with an addition of gold silk I hope to use to accent a particular portion).

I must freely confess I fear I am already making excuses for not following through, since my next thought is that I wanted to purchase some white wool to test dying techniques. I suppose the best way of doing that would be to dig out what white wool I already have (alpaca, sheep, etc) and plan on using that to dye with until I have figured out which, if any, of the natural dyes get me the colors I want. If the natural dyes don’t work the way I want then I will have just used some of my wool-stash anyway. My next experiment is probably going to be centered around washing the batts that I carded containing ‘sticky wool’. I am hoping that there is some lanolin or other processing oils contained in the batts that is making them sticky. If that is the case then a good hot soak should loosen up the oils enough for me to wind up with a fluffy batt. If not then washing with Dawn, if they start to felt then I might try to spread it thin and experiment with felting.

I am sort of excited to let the wool speak for itself and decide what it will become. I am still spinning thin with the blues, now that I am feeling better. So many exciting things going on!